YouTube influencer and Franciscan Father Casey Cole spoke to a group of young Brisbane Catholics about the real meaning of a blessed life at Reclaim on Tuesday 3 June.
Fr Cole stars on the Breaking in the Habit YouTube channel, which has more than 500,000 subscribers, and visited Brisbane as part of an Australia-wide tour.
He said they might have seen the social media trend, #blessed, tacked on to images of people receiving a free coffee or getting a new car.
“New job, new boyfriend, great new shirt, hashtag blessed – everything is wonderful and in one sense that’s great,” he said.
“In one sense, I don’t want to get angry about that because I know what people are doing is just saying that they’re thankful that God is in their lives and things are good, and they don’t want to take things for granted.
“But I do have a problem with the use of blessed in that way all the time.”
He said when Jesus talked about being blessed, he was not talking about receiving benefits.
“Blessed are not the people who have all the money and the comfort and stability, he says, ‘Blessed are the poor’, ‘Blessed are the hungry’, ‘Blessed are the mourners’,” he said.
“When was the last time you’re on Instagram and someone said at a funeral of a loved one, ‘hashtag blessed’.”
He told the young people he was excited to share what Jesus actually said and reclaim the meaning of blessed.
American YouTube influencer and Franciscan Father Casey Cole. Image: The Catholic Leader/Supplied
“The blessed are the people who are poor and hungry and mourning and terrible things of the world,” he said.
“This is what it means to be blessed.”
He said hardship was a powerful reminder that worldly comforts and instant gratification could not truly satisfy the human heart.
He said the hunger for righteousness through Jesus was what truly satisfied.
Reclaim was organised by Archdiocesan Ministries youth team, which saw a jump in regular numbers for the event with Fr Cole.
Youth team project officer Amy Dewanto said the night was full of curiosity and a “sense of readiness”.
“Something that really stood out to me was when he shared with us how, ‘God doesn’t want us to suffer… And there is value in our suffering…. It can help us to focus, be reminded, on what really matters’,” she said.
She said they had 141 young people at the event.
During the question and answer period, she said they heard questions about keeping faith alive as well as on discernment and evangelisation.
The event was hosted at Emmanuel City Mission on Brisbane’s southside.
Reproduced with permission from The Catholic Leader, the news publication of the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.
